Natural and man-made fibers are routinely assessed for a variety of different properties, so as to grade the fiber samples. These properties include things such as fiber length, strength, color, moisture content, crimp, fineness, and non-fiber content. For example, measuring the properties of cotton fiber so as to provide a grade for the quality of the cotton is an important step in determining the value of the fibers.
Natural fibers such as cotton can be contaminated by non-primary-fiber material, which is often generally referred to as trash. Such trash may be, for instance, husks, seed, twigs, bark, leaves, dirt, or rocks. Measuring the non-fiber content of a fiber sample is accomplished by separating the fibers in a fiber sample from as much of the non-fiber content in the fiber sample as possible, and weighing or otherwise quantifying at least two of: (1) the original fiber sample, (2) the fibers that were separated from the original fiber sample, and (3) the trash that was separated from the original fiber sample. Typically, anything that is not the desired fibers themselves is considered non-fiber content, and designated as trash.
Unfortunately, prior art separators typically allow significant quantities of fibers to remain mixed in with the separated trash, thus making it difficult to determine the total trash content of the original fiber sample, and also tend to take up a large amount of space.
What is needed, therefore, is a system that reduces problems such as those described above, at least in part.